I am SO excited to teach you how to make your own Signature Style Board today, and even MORE excited about those of you who are going to share them with us {more on that later}!!

First, I must make an earth-shattering announcement:

I am on Instagram!!!

I know. I know. You can hardly contain your excitement. But for realsy, it is so much fun already.

I have entered the new millennium, and I now have an iPhone {y’all. how do people afford these phones??? I had to wait until I could write one off for business, and even still, I had to finagle a plan with Smart Talk in order to even consider it [sidebar to my sidebar, I only pay $45/month with Smart Talk for unlimited playtime with the iPhone 5. Check it out. True Story]. And yet, it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry age 23 has one. How are these people paying for $100+ plans per month?? Do explain.}.

Wow.

That may have been my biggest Digression Moment here at FHD ever.

My point?

Come follow me on Instagram!

{@fieldstonehill}

Look. Here is my pretty, first-ever pic from Instagram. This was moments after hubby built me a fire, and moments before I sat on my fancy fanny for an hour or so…

Knowing your Signature Style comes from several years of repeatedly choosing what you love. { <- Tweet this }

And we chatted about this stunningly amazing icon and took a look-sy at her own Signature Style:

surely you have figured out which amazing icon I was talking about.

Because her style is THAT signature.

Well, now.

Do I have a FUN exercise for you today!

Today we are going to learn how to make our own Signature Style Board:

Take a look at mine! It was so much fun to pick out my favorite Signature Style pictures:

// I hope you will have a blast and make one of your own //

And here is the How-To:

{don’t be boxed in by these directions, they are simply here for you if you have no idea where to begin, or how to make a collage}

Head over to your Pinterest Pinboards, or any other collection of digital inspiration pics you have.

Select 6-9 of your FAVORITE images ever, based solely on what you find to be beautiful and pleasing to your eye. Select images that you feel visually define your signature style

Save those pics to your computer, in a place where you can easily find them. {If you are not sure how to do this, trust me, Google and You-tube can answer nearly any tech-challenged question you can throw at them!}

Go to PicMonkey.com

Click on the top tab that says “Create a Collage”

Select “Open” from the top tabs and then import your signature style photos. They will be opened over in a column on the left side of the screen.

Next, open your layout options, by clicking on the second icon down {all the way to the left} entitled “Layouts”

Select the layout you like best that will work with the number of pics you have. I prefer the 9-square layout under “Square Deal.”

Click back on the first icon, the one that looks like a mountain, entitled “Images”

From there, drag the images you want into the spot you want. You can re-drag or move the images around until you are happy.

When you are finished with your Signature Style Board, be sure to click “Save” at the top.

Give your Board a name, Save, and then enjoy! Or plaster it all over the internet. Or better yet: Share it with us!!!

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE to see your Signature Style Boards!

Once you have created your masterpiece, find somewhere public on the web to stash it, and then leave a link in the comments below so that we can all see your Signature Style Board! {to all you nudists out there, I am sorry. Please don’t link all that stuff up, ya hear?}

You ARE sassy today – adorably so! Definitely a different tone…made me smile We just got iphones in November and I wonder, too, how so many people can afford them. Here’s how I do it – we have a family plan with 4 of us, me, hubby and 2 oldest daughters 18 & newly 16 (the age when we declare our kids are “eligible” for a phone) Hubby doesn’t spend money on himself, so he didn’t get one, 16-year-old doesn’t get something that fancy right off the bat AND has to pay $10 for texting each month (an arbitrary figure we decided on – no freebies around here), oldest daughter decided it was worth it to pay $40 a month to have an iphone (she has a part-time job), which leaves $75 a month between my husband’s cheapie phone and my iphone – which I already wonder how I lived without!!

No comment on nudists :), but I am so excited to use your steps and make a signature style board!!! It’s on my list to do later, after I school my kids, and then I’ll link up.

Ooh fun idea! And you know what? Even those people who are not bloggers could just make a new pinboard and link up their pinboard here. Love this challenge; I need to go dig around my pinterest account for a while!

Okay, so I couldn’t wait until this afternoon. It makes me smile looking at it all put together! Thanks for the inspiration! (in more ways than one – I think a couple of those images are things you’ve had on your blog or pinned yourself) http://pinterest.com/pin/231442868322196401/

How much does it cost for you to tell us what it means about ourselves? I enjoyed making it, but it was also kind of hard. I love so many different styles and looks and a great picture of a great room confuses me every time.

I will definitely do this. But maybe not today. Or even this week.
I got up at 4 am to take my husband to the airport in the pouring rain today.
Within minutes of returning home I had to take my 4 yo son to the ER because he was incoherently screaming in pain (scratched eyeball)
My 10 year old has had a fever over 102 since Tuesday.
My kitchen sink freaked out today and won’t drain, so I have to wash our dishes in the laundry room because it weirds me out to have a plumber in the house without my husband.
My pregnant body is TIRED.

***But I WILL do this project, it sounds so fun! And I WILL link back to it!***

I’m totally with you on the iPhone. I want one but they’re so expensive! I keep saying it’s going to be my next one but we’ll see … I’m also loving this series about decorating paralysis and the idea of a signature board. I love decorating my house but feel a bit all over the map with it. Really enjoy following your blog! Sharon

Thank you once again Darlene, for helping me define what I really and truly love and want for our home! I had so much fun creating this board and it was interesting to see common themes emerge!http://pinterest.com/pin/286823069990201285/

This was so much fun!!! Thank you for making me think really hard on a rainy Saturday afternoon. The library photos were easy but I truly had to spend time “feeling” through photos of fashion styles until my heart swooned over Antoni Gaudi in Anthropologie.

This project was not only fun, but really got me inspired and motivated! I mean REALLY! Besides blogging about it, I managed to crank out 5 paint projects I had been waffling on, 2 decorating projects, and up my wardrobe game! Lol! Thanks! http://pinterest.com/pin/240379698832850025/

The fun part was going through everybody else’s styleboards and seeing themes come out. It’s not that everybody has *a* style, it’s that everybody is a confluence of many streams of styles and inspirations.

Now I want to have a party to meet all the fabulous people you know here, Darlene. We have to visit all those boards and pick which dream home to meet in, though…and then everybody’s food boards for choosing the menu…and then everybody’s fitness boards for working off the pounds after the party.

I loved this idea Darlene…and it was really fun designing my own Signature Style Board. Here’s my link http://pinterest.com/pin/152840981075832011/ I also blogged about it and encouraged others to do the same with a link back to you! Blessings ~ Judy

This was so much fun! Thanks for inspiring me to pull together my signature style. It’s amazing how many of the pics have the same look. I guess my style is consistent. Here’s my pin: http://pinterest.com/pin/215750638370660677/

Thank you for the incredible tutorial (the whole series, not just the collage). It was so fun to see my style board come together! I will soon be writing a post about my style, with links back to you because you did such a fantastic job with this series!

This will tell you how old school I am, but I love to look at pictures in magazines. I feel like on the net I don’t get to see the textures very well and I like holding the image in my hand and not looking at it on a screen. My big dilemma is whether to cut up my beloved design magazines to make a collage or not.

We just moved and I came upon your Overcoming Decorating Paralysis series just before we left. I haven’t been able to leave it alone! It has been the most helpful set of exercises in discovering preferences that should have been so obvious to me, but weren’t. I just made my signature style board and I absolutely love it! I will be referring to my board, your site, and this series again and again!

[…] style. I believe you should really take the time out to think about what you truly love. And I even did a fun post and entire Pinterest board for my readers {you can still join in!} featuring THEIR Signature Style […]